Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, January 21, 2010

FLORENCE, Italy -- Giuliano Mignini, the lead investigator who successfully prosecuted Seattle native Amanda Knox of murder, was convicted Friday in Florence of abuse of office.

Although cleared of the main charge against him, the remaining charges resulted in a suspended sentence of one year and four months.

A judge decided that Mignini abused his office by wiretapping several journalists and police officials.

The conviction stems from a series of killings in Florence -- the so-called "Monster of Florence" case -- and not the Knox prosecution. It is unclear how the prosecutor's troubles will affect Knox's appeal. She was convicted in December of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher.

His troubles may keep Mignini from taking part in the appeal. His lawyer noted that Friday's decision wasn't about the Knox prosecution.

"This was a sentence that has everything to do with the power equilibrium in Florence. The Meredith case has nothing to do with it," Mauro Ronco told seattlepi.com.

But Knox's American attorney, while saying he respects the Italian justice system, noted that in many jurisdictions, including the U.S., a prosecutor's office wouldn't have proceeded with a case while it faced an indictment.

Last summer, an Italian court decided to delay a decision in the accusations against Mignini. That allowed him to continue to pursue his case and trial against Knox.

"I don't think it's good for a prosecutor's office to prosecute a case when they are under indictment," said Knox's lawyer, Theodore Simon of Philadelphia.

By doing so, the fairness of the trial and integrity of the verdict can be called into question, he said. And he noted that Italy's Supreme Court had faulted the prosecutor's office for violating Knox's rights and supressing some of the comments she made to Italian police, Despite Friday's conviction, Mignini will be allowed to continue his magisterial duties. If he is not convicted of any other crimes in the next five years, Friday's action will be expunged.

"I am shocked," Mignini said in an interview with seattlepi.com after the hearing, held in an ancient, baroque Florentine courtroom with oak paneling and antique leather chairs. "It was totally unexpected. "

Surrounded by his family, including his daughter, his sister and his 40-year-old wife -- who is now four months pregnant with their fourth child -- a stupefied and disappointed Mignini said he is a victim of a Florentine power struggle and vowed to appeal.

"This case never should have been heard here in Florence," he said.

Francesco Maresca, the lawyer who represented the Kercher family in the Knox trial, was also present when the sentence was declared.

He expressed surprise, but maintained that the Monster of Florence case is complicated and entirely unrelated to the Knox prosecution.

"They are separate trials," Maresca said. "They have nothing to do with one another."

Mignini led the investigation into the murder of 21-year-old Kercher in Perugia, Italy, in November 2007. In early December 2009, Mignini obtained convictions in the case: 22-year-old Knox was sentenced to 26 years in jail for murder, sexual assault, theft and slander and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, to 25.

A third suspect, Rudy Guede, was convicted after a fast-track hearing. On appeal, his sentence was reduced to 16 years.

Mignini has been dogged especially in American media accounts and by public relations representatives and supporters who argue that Knox is innocent. They charge the prosecutor overstepped his judicial authority.

The abuse-of-office charges heard Friday result from a 2006 episode that happened as he was investigating the Monster of Florence serial killings in the '70s and '80s.

The epic investigation has stretched over 30 years.

It fell into Mignini's hands after it was discovered that a Perugia doctor, Francesco Narducci, may have been killed in foul play or in a conspiratorial cover-up related to the Monster of Florence case. Authorities claimed in 1985 that the doctor had drowned.

An exhumation of the body ordered by Mignini led authorities to believe he had indeed been killed.

This put some of the investigation into the Perugia jurisdiction. A turf battle between the two territories (Florence and Perugia) broke out over who should be investigating.

"This case is a complete minefield," said investigative journalist Franca Selvatici of La Repubblica, who has covered the case since 1981.

"It is a unique case, unique in its cruelty, its ferociousness, but also in the fact that there were so many different and contested hypotheses, both on part of investigators and journalists," Selvatici explained.

Perugia claimed jurisdiction since Narducci was found in the province of Perugia, while the Monster of Florence killings were in the province of Florence.

Authorities in Florence wanted to control the investigation, which Mignini said resulted in an investigative dead end.

When Mignini pressed forward to investigate some powerful Florentine personalities, he eventually hit a brick wall and was denied permission by Florence officials.

The detective working the case, Michele Giuttari (himself convicted Friday and given a suspended sentence of one year and six months) secretly recorded a phone conversation of the Florentine prosecutor Paolo Canessa.

In the tape, Canessa, claimed his boss was not a free man, implying his hands were tied due to powerful personalities that could have been drawn into the homicide investigation.

Mignini used public funds to have the tape analyzed. And that triggered charges against him.

"There were errors upon errors in this case, on part of police investigators, on part of journalists, on part of everyone," Selvatici said.

Friday, however, the investigating Florence magistrate ruled that Mignini was not in the wrong for the taping of Canessa, who had implied that his superiors were not willing to investigate further.

However, the judge did find that Mignini had abused his office when he wiretapped several journalists as well as a Florentine police official, during the course of his investigation into the death of Narducci.

Most court observers Friday described the court's decision as aimed at placating both critics and supporters of Mignini's theories.

For example, the court agreed that its own Florentine judges had indeed said that they were not free in investigating some powerful colleagues in connection with the Monster of Florence crimes.

But they slapped the hands of Mignini for going above and beyond his authority when he wiretapped several journalists.

Mauro Ronco, Mignini's lawyer, noted that those wiretaps had been authorized by the investigating judge who was overseeing the case.

"We will confront all of these issues in appeal once we have seen the judges' motivations," Ronco said.